Ruth

Summary

Ruth is Gaskell's novel about a 'fallen woman', written to challenge the Victorian assumption that an unmarried mother and her child were beyond redemption. Ruth Hilton is a beautiful, innocent orphan of fifteen, apprenticed to a dressmaker, Mrs Mason, in a country town, where she works long hours in a cold workroom. At a ball where she is sent to mend dresses she meets Henry Bellingham, a wealthy, careless young gentleman. Their friendship grows during Sunday walks, and when Mrs Mason sees them together and dismisses her, Ruth, homeless and with nowhere to go, goes away with him to London and then to North Wales. There Bellingham falls seriously ill with fever. His mother arrives, takes control of his nursing, and removes him, leaving Ruth with a banknote and a letter of dismissal. In despair Ruth thinks of drowning herself, but she is prevented by Thurstan Benson, a gentle Dissenting minister with a spinal deformity whom she had met in the village. Benson and his sister Faith take her home to the town of Eccleston, and when they learn she is pregnant they decide, against Benson's conscience, to present her as a young widow, Mrs Denbigh. Their servant Sally grumbles but cuts off Ruth's hair to make her look like a widow. Ruth's son Leonard is born, and she becomes devoted to him and to self-improvement. She is employed as governess to the daughters of Mr Bradshaw, the rich, self-righteous leading member of Benson's chapel. Years later Bellingham, now calling himself Mr Donne, reappears as a parliamentary candidate backed by Bradshaw. He recognizes Ruth and, learning of his son, offers marriage, but she refuses because she no longer respects him and fears his influence on Leonard. Then her secret is revealed. Bradshaw denounces her and the Bensons, and Leonard learns of his illegitimacy and is crushed with shame. Ruth's rehabilitation comes through service. When a typhus epidemic strikes Eccleston, she volunteers as a nurse in the fever hospital, where her courage and tenderness earn the town's gratitude. Hearing that Donne has caught the fever, she nurses him back to health, but she catches the infection herself and dies in delirium. Bradshaw, softened, is reconciled with Benson, and Leonard is taken into the practice of Mr Davis, a kindly surgeon who was himself born outside marriage. The novel closes at Ruth's grave.

Top Lessons

• Redemption without condemnation

  Gaskell insists that Ruth's 'fall' was the product of innocence, poverty and exploitation, and that she can lead a good life. The novel indicts a society that punishes women and children for men's actions.

• The ethics of the kind lie

  The Bensons' decision to pass Ruth off as a widow protects her and her child but troubles Benson's conscience. The book explores whether compassionate deception can be justified.

• Care as vocation

  Ruth's work in the fever hospital turns private shame into public service. Gaskell presents nursing as moral heroism at a time when hospital nursing was still a low-status job.

Verified Quotes

Medical Lens

Ruth is one of the most important Victorian novels about nursing. Written shortly before Florence Nightingale's Crimean work made hospital nursing respectable, it presents Ruth volunteering in a typhus ward as an act of heroic, quasi-religious service, at a time when hired hospital nurses were often stereotyped as drunken and disreputable. The typhus epidemic in Eccleston reflects the real fevers of crowded industrial towns before germ theory, and the novel registers fear of contagion and the class geography of disease. Bellingham's earlier fever in Wales is nursed by his mother and a hired nurse, a contrast in kinds of care. Ruth's pregnancy and confinement, Benson's spinal deformity, Ruth's suicidal impulse after abandonment, and her final delirium are all treated with sympathy. Mr Davis, the surgeon, represents a humane, practical medicine that judges by conduct, not birth.

• Ch. 5–7

  Bellingham's fever in Wales; his mother takes over the sickroom and excludes Ruth.

• Ch. 8

  Abandoned, Ruth runs toward a pool to drown herself and is stopped by Benson.

• Ch. 14–15

  Ruth's confinement and the birth of Leonard in the Bensons' house.

• Ch. 32–33

  Typhus epidemic in Eccleston; Ruth volunteers as matron-nurse in the fever ward of the hospital.

• Ch. 34–35

  Ruth nurses Donne through the fever, falls ill herself and dies in delirium.

• Ch. 35–36

  Mr Davis the surgeon offers Leonard an apprenticeship, revealing his own illegitimate birth.